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Oct 15
2019
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Helen Whitten
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From Tennessee, North and South Carolina to Georgia the word we heard over and over was “Impeach”. It took me back to a trip we did to Washington DC in the early 1970s when all the car stickers read “Impeach Nixon” following the Watergate scandal. Quite a flashback. And having thought we might escape the endless speculation and search for facts in the discussion of Brexit, we ended up hearing the journalists’ endless speculation about impeaching Trump instead. Every programme we watched. The rest of the world might as well not exist when you travel in the USA.
But it’s a great country to visit. Staggering landscapes and different cultures, architecture and town-planning in each place. The Brits snigger about the Americans not having passports or travelling outside their own borders but quite honestly where’s the need? They have every kind of vista and recreation they could possibly require in their own country. And to travel anywhere they have to cross an Ocean which, until recently, was extremely expensive. And still costs a fair whack. I would say the majority of Americans we met on this trip had not been anywhere else. It didn’t make them boring. However, we did become aware of treading carefully on their politics in the South. It is Trump-land, generally speaking, though we did meet some who were just as embarrassed about Trump as we are about our Westminster shenanigans.
I had been nervous about the driving. I needn’t have been. As Paul Theroux says in his excellent book Deep South “travelling in America is unlike travelling anywhere else on earth…Breezing from place to place on wonderful roads seemed so sweet, so simple.” Where, in my youth, I used to get impatient at the slow speed limits, now I found it a delight to travel slow, enjoy the view and not feel hassled. Even in the mountains near Highlands, North Carolina, the road tripped back and forth around twisty corners but it was nothing like as challenging as driving the narrow twisty roads one meets in France, say, where not only is the road narrow and precipitous but one is likely to get stuck behind a group of cyclists, making it impossible to overtake. You don’t find cyclists on American roads. No joggers. No walkers. No bikes. Just cars. But then it was nearly 100 degrees!
“Don’t walk the streets after dark” the Security Guard in Memphis told us the night of our arrival “there are crazies out there”. And indeed we did see a few wildish looking folk and I came up with the 3-letter acronym TGFU – Thank God for Uber! Wherever we found ourselves, in whatever seedy part of town, we could call up a clean car and, generally anyway, a polite driver with whom we could have an interesting conversation as we were driven safely back to our hotel.
But we had a good time in Memphis nonetheless. Visiting Sun Studios and learning of the talent-spotter and entrepreneur Sam Phillips who set it up and recorded artists like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Howlin’ Wolf and Roy Orbison among many others. An example here, as we found in many of the stories we came across on our visit, of someone who had a vision and, despite difficulties, maintained the determination and resilience to achieve that success despite set-backs.
Then a visit to Graceland, Elvis’ home, described as a ‘mansion’ although in size not much larger than many a middle class home in the UK these days. We were impressed, as many others have been, by the cosy and warm feeling of the house. Somehow one could sense that as a man Elvis was sentimental, loved his Mum and grandmother, and enjoyed being generous to family and friends. Seeing the photos of him as an extremely handsome young man and hearing his wonderful voice reminded me of my childhood when my older sister played his records on 45s, or EPs as they were known. Good times.
And so on to Nashville along the IS40 in our Chrysler Standard SUV. A comfortable car to drive despite the enormous trucks that surrounded us on the Interstate. We were told by one of our Uber drivers that the IS40 between Memphis and Nashville is known for drug traffic, as FedEx trucks bomb along there and the police apparently watch out for them. I was glad I didn’t know that beforehand!
Everywhere we went we heard great country music. Both of us love it – tuneful, a bit soppy and always within a storytelling context. Our night at the Grand Ole Opry was one of the best of my life. We even saw Kevin Bacon and his brother singing as a duo there. And we noticed that there, and wherever there was an audience, the compere would ask the US Veterans to stand up while the audience applauded their courage and acknowledged their contribution. These announcements of recognition occur also in train stations and airports. This contrasts with home where, apart from the Chelsea Pensioners, there seems to be too little acknowledgement of our own troops.
Nashville is party city. Music booms from every corner and there are hen and graduation parties galore, parading around in open top limos and trucks, drinking and waving to the passers-by on the pavements. A funny idea, really, a ‘look-at-me’ past-time that does seem a little pointless, although no doubt fun for those involved.
Some things were hard to find. Fresh food. A convenience store. Milk. It was near impossible to get a cappuccino. I have got so used to a morning cup that it never occurred to me that America, home of Starbucks, would so seldom be able to offer me a cappuccino. And so it had to be the usual revolting (in my opinion) American filter coffee. And with taxes and 20% tips on top. That takes some getting used to when the pound is so low against the dollar!
The weather was near unbearable in Memphis and Nashville. It was unusually hot even for them, although we heard that similar temperatures had been experienced for a long period in 1954.
Next stop was Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s hotel and theme park which was far more elegant and comfortable and far less bling than we had imagined. Country music played in the hotel and the theme park, both of which are set in pretty wooded countryside. The ’bling’ moment was at the Dolly Parton Stampede, which is a sort of Wild West show with Native Indians, cowboys, horses, buffalo, long-horned cattle being corralled, wagons, piglet-racing, chase-the-chicken racing and more. It was all huge fun and set in the context of the Civil War, the North against the South as a competition within the audience. I reflected that we probably wouldn’t allow the piglet-racing nor the chicken-chasing in the UK as the RSPCA might forbid it but all the animals involved looked thoroughly healthy and well-tended.
And everywhere we went we found good manners both from adults and children alike. Very polite ‘good mornings/good afternoons’ and ‘ma’am’ and ‘sir’ used frequently and a friendly welcome. The Southern accent and hospitality is renowned and we certainly experienced it along the road and especially once we reached Highlands in North Carolina. A wealthy gentile town that reminded me of Wimbledon Village or Virginia Water, where we felt a real sense of community and family values. There are many churches of all denominations here as elsewhere and, on the Sunday, the Main Street was full of smartly dressed folk making their way to one church or another. I felt the focus of that neighbourliness when I was having to reverse out of a difficult blind spot and a kind lady spontaneously knocked on my window and said she would help me out by checking the traffic behind the truck parked at my rear. I was very grateful.
And beyond that we didn’t see CCTV and few radar speed traps. One is not coddled at all in terms of checking in to a hotel (no passport requested). Picking up the rental car they just pointed to a row of cars and told us to choose the one we wanted. No instructions, no information whatsoever. So when we needed fuel we didn’t know whether it was diesel or petrol. There was no notice on the car at all to signal what it might be. Luckily there was a guy filling his car who told us he thought it would be petrol. Luckily also, he was right!
We visited the civil rights museum in Memphis and this reminds one of the terrible barbarity of humans one to another. The legacy of the Jim Crow policies of segregation are still felt and when David travelled the Southern States in 1963 the audiences were segregated in the jazz clubs he went to. In Savannah and Charleston, at the end of our trip, we visited plantations and saw the dreadful conditions of the enslaved. There was little mention of the slave masters in Africa who sent them there, which I felt was an omission. And the sad part is that slavery and trafficking of humans still exists today, all these years later. But then human cruelty can be witnessed throughout history – the holocaust, Pol Pot, Stalin, the wartime ‘comfort women’, Chairman Mao and many many more. The question we need to keep asking is how to stop it happening again.
Something I noticed was that we saw virtually no Asian or Indian families here. A map of Nashville showed where different populations live. It reflected how like attracts like – Jewish communities, Irish communities, Hispanic communities, Afro-Caribbean communities come together there as they do in other places. Inevitably one is drawn to an area where there is a cousin, aunt, uncle or friend. It’s human nature.
On another note, I did begin to wonder whether orthopaedic surgeons were involved in the design of loos. I couldn’t imagine how the larger American managed either to sit down let alone get up from sitting positions that were almost on the ground. The pressure on dicky knees and hips must be enormous. Good for business perhaps?!
It’s been hard to escape the tomato ketchup bottle or food wrapped in a bun. But every so often, and particularly if you look hard, you do find excellent restaurants offering superb food. And expensive food, in pleasant surroundings. But the norm is fast food and chips still served on plastic trays in plastic cups with plastic straws. Talking of which we only saw one roof area of solar panels and no wind farms where we have travelled. Concerns about the environment were rarely witnessed.
But there are signs warning of $1000 fines and prison for littering. This reminded me of the Arlo Guthrie movie Alice’s Restaurant. The roadsides are, as a result maybe, far cleaner than ours. I was always horrified by the amount of litter and debris we passed as we drove down the A31 from London to Winchester. Surely we should educate our children and adults to respect the countryside more by increasing our own littering fines?
What else? We saw far fewer dogs than we would here. And I didn’t see a single cat so it’s lovely to get back to Chico.
The stories we heard in the historic houses we visited in Savannah and Charleston brought to mind the tough life people experienced. Of a house buzzing with mosquitoes and bugs, even as one ate one’s meal, or slept. Of yellow fever, diptheria, death in childbirth, smallpox, infant mortality. Story upon story of loss – human and financial. Then the resilience of a widow or widower to pull themselves back up again.
Savannah was saved from the bulldozers by a group of seven feisty and determined women who bought up the historic houses, one by one, restored them and protected them from planners who had wished to turn them into car parks. We heard similar stories in Charleston. Both towns are fabulous examples of planning and architecture, though our Uber driver told us that urbanisation was forcing rattle snakes and poisonous spiders into the town centres now. She had just been bitten by a Brown Ransom spider that kills off cells. She thought it might have been in her car – I was glad to get out!
Our train ride from Savannah to Charleston on Amtrak’s Silver Meteor was extraordinarily slow-paced. And late. Where seats and carriage numbers would have been allocated by computer and online booking in the UK, here it was done by hand, on pieces of paper depending on where you were headed. For a country that has led the digital revolution this seemed somewhat archaic though worked fine, and the service we were given was both friendly and helpful.
So what do I take from all this? That good manners and a friendly and curious approach to others brings with it a richness of sharing and information. That it was not so long ago that life was very harsh in so many ways and that medicine and science have enabled us to live so comfortably and well now that illness and death, though natural, seem to offend us. That the spirit of enterprise brings with it resilience. Get knocked down and you find ways to bob back up again if you possibly can. The sense of not being ashamed of business – that hard work brings with it meaning, innovation, the ability not only to care for one’s own family but to employ others and pay the taxes that enable a reasonable infrastructure for all. Of course it isn’t perfect but for us everything worked like clockwork. I would recommend it! And despite warnings, we didn’t see a single gun, other than in a Museum!
Sep 18
2019
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Helen Whitten
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I went to a talk the other night by Frank Dikotter, the author of How to be a Dictator. He mentioned at the beginning of the evening that all the dictators he had profiled were men. So, at the end of the lecture I asked him whether he could have chosen a woman. His immediate response was “well it is still a man’s world.”
And it is. Just look at the photos or news coverage of political or business meetings from around the world and you mainly see a majority of men around the head table. I am not seeking a world of women dictators but despite all my generation’s protestations for women’s equality there are still major gaps that need to be addressed, particularly financially, but also in terms of how women are encouraged to think about themselves as confident individuals, independent of men. I worry about the insidious ‘put-downs’ that occur to keep women in their place, which are by no means a domain of the older generation but sadly are witnessed in the behaviours of young men too. For that reason I worry for the young women of today … and those growing up to be women in tomorrow’s world.
I question why so much publicity and praise is being given to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian view of a future world in The Handmaid’s Tale. It fills me with horror and I have no desire to watch it or read the book. There is far too much subjugation of women still occurring globally to wish to watch more fiction on the subject. In my experience of my own life and the lives of my clients it is far more useful to imagine a picture of the world one is seeking to create rather than to hold images of a world one would hate to live in.
If it is ever to be a world where the balance of power is equally shared by men and women we have a great deal of work to do. Perhaps it is the perennial concern of the older generation to be anxious about the world their grandchildren will enter and, as you know, I am in the main an optimist. But there are aspects of what is happening in the UK and the world, with the ease of access to porn, the violence being shown to women in Africa, India, the Middle East, South America to name just a few, the huge increase in reports of rape here, that makes me uneasy. Of course we don’t want to convict the innocent but surely it is obvious that there are only a minority of women who raise these issues without due cause. Neither the police nor university departments, where girls report being unsupported over complaints of rape or harassment, are taking sufficient action to keep girls safe. These are intelligent young women who are shocked to find themselves victims of sexual misconduct.
The growing tendency for young boys and men to view porn is leading to more of this hideous habit of bullying girls and women to feel they have to sink to the demands of partners. Whilst we have spent our lives promoting women’s confidence, the technical revolution of sadistic and misogynistic digital games and apps has led to an undermining of what we have built up. I mentioned ‘hazing’ in a recent blog but have just come across ‘stealthing’ which is where a man removes a condom half way through making love. Isn’t that appallingly callous and cruel?
Why do young men feel that they can treat girls in such a disrespectful and cold way? Perhaps it is the objectification that comes through viewing porn and violent games. The #MeToo campaign has uncovered women’s experiences of men and it doesn’t make good reading. (Though at the same time women should not be opportunistic in claiming harassment where there may have been none. Nor should men be judged online without a legal process.) But the stories imply that the sense of entitlement that my generation experienced lives on today. A man’s world still.
And talking of safety, we are back to my old chestnut of trans people in girls’ changing rooms in schools. A leaked set of guidelines from the Equality and Human Rights Commission is recommending that those who identify as transgender or are ‘exploring their gender identity’ will be allowed to use the changing rooms of their chosen gender and would also be allowed to sleep in single-sex rooms on school trips if they identify with that gender. Tanya Carter, of the Safe Schools Alliance, was reported in the Sunday Times 15.9.19, as saying she was appalled by this approach which ‘ignores the rights of girls’. Girls at several schools have been told they can no longer wear skirts, although at other schools boys are being told they can wear skirts (it’s a mad world!). Many schools are adopting trousers for all.
The natural enjoyment of being different and experimenting with fashion is being denied to girls. They are being expected to dress and behave like men rather than embrace the fun of difference. On the one hand this is all being done in the name of ‘diversity’ but the simple diversity that exists between boys and girls, men and women, is now being obliterated.
And the trend continues into school and professional sport. Transgender players will continue to be able to compete in the category they choose, even if it is patently obviously unfair to do so.
All this in order to make a small percentage of the population more comfortable, which is fine except it has the potential for making others feel uncomfortable. It all seems thoroughly undemocratic. Who has asked girls how they feel about these changes? Or you? Or me?
Of course trans children and adults should be treated with respect, compassion and consideration. My question is how much consideration are girls being given? But any time anyone expresses an inkling of concern on these issues one is labelled a transphobe and told to shut up.
The difficulties continue into adult life, it seems to me. There remains the problem of tax on sanitary products, which makes a natural occurrence for 50% of the population financially onerous, especially for poorer girls and women. And is still unacknowledged in its debilitating impact on women in the workplace and in sport, who are expected just to grin and bear it, as they have for centuries.
Then there’s childbirth. This has become more efficient in some ways but less caring in others. Young women in our family have been sent home 5 hours after a first baby. No time to adapt in the safety of a hospital, to learn more about feeding, nappy changing, bathing. Chucked back into the home where you are totally dependent on the kindness of a husband or family to help you get your strength back and become more confident. In my mother’s day new mothers stayed in hospital for up to four weeks to adapt to becoming mothers. In my time I was in hospital for 10 days after a Caesar. My daughter-in-law was back home in 24 hours after a Caesarean. I cannot imagine how I would have coped, as all I can remember is the pain and exhaustion!
And, as a recent survey found, there is little care for the mother after birth. Apparently there is funding for a baby’s health check but not for the mother! Many new mums are hardly given any time with a health visitor or GP to give them a health check, let alone advice and comfort in what can be a hugely anxious time.
Maternity leave is helpful but at the same time leaves women open to being left behind in skillsets and the career ladder. It is only women who can carry children to create the next generations – the technology hasn’t advanced to alter that particular role yet! So, for the sake of all humanity, surely they need support.
Motherhood leaves women way behind financially. In a recent UBS study of male and female finances they calculated that a wife not only forfeits a year’s salary on maternity leave but, with all other factors taken into account, is likely to be 43% less well-off than her husband at the end of her life, even if they have similar qualifications. Part of this is also that women can still assume that a man will take care of their investments, which can leave a woman exposed should they become widowed or single. The UBS report “Own your worth: why women should take control of their wealth to achieve financial well-being” points out that many women defer thinking about their long-term future and, as a result, end up with less pension.
Guidant Financial reported recently that more women are starting their own businesses. This has been a trend for some time. Having run a small business myself I know that it can give one more control over one’s time, not having to fit into an organisational system or answer to a boss. However, one always has to answer to clients and it is extremely hard work, often with less pay and certainly with less perks in the way of sick pay, holiday pay or the ability to put sufficient funds into a pension.
Fathers are far more involved with their children and the home than they ever used to be, which is great. The sharing is good. Yet Ruth Davidson’s resignation recently has once again highlighted both the emotional pull of motherhood and also the conflict that arises when one has to let go of a job one loves yet can no longer manage happily.
The world needs women’s voices and perspectives. Governments and organisations need to reflect the world in a balanced way. We can be every bit as skilled, competent and intelligent as men in a multitude of different careers and ways but we may see things differently, may pick up something that someone else has not noticed, may approach a situation from another angle. Yet becoming a CEO or an MP is daunting when one can be judged more harshly and become the recipient of brutal trolling. I take my hat off to those women who have stuck their head above the parapet and have to work their way through revolting tweets with threats of death and rape.
We must be vigilant to protect what has been built up in our culture and society. I would hate the cultural or digital habits of young men to push women back down to any lower status. The key now is to encourage young women to expect and demand good things for themselves in work and life and to command the respect of others, not be self-deprecating. And for young men to see that women are their equals.
We really don’t need awful images of women being subjugated as we see in The Handmaid’s Tale. Do we? Let’s build the images of young women happily running organisations, families and countries alongside their male counterparts, equal but different. Knowing their worth.
Just to let you know that we are off on a road trip in the USA next week so I shall be silent for a few weeks while we drink in the atmosphere and music of Tennessee, the Carolinas and Georgia. Will report back!
Sep 10
2019
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Helen Whitten
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I can’t pretend to be an expert on the law or on democratic process but the current complex conflict over Brexit: deal, no-deal, call for a general election, refusal to call an election, delay a general election, throws up so many questions for me. Do you find the current shenanigans as confusing as I do? Parliament claims to want a deal but didn’t want the deal and now they have secured that there will be no ‘no-deal’ nor an immediate election. Unless, that is, Boris Johnson resigns or calls for a vote of no-confidence in himself. Hmmm…
The trouble is that I am not really sure which side is being the less democratic. On the one side Boris Johnson was accused of being anti-democratic as a result of his decision to prorogue Parliament. But the Court has ruled that this was not illegal and in fact quite a normal event. Also, as it is Party Conference time, the argument is that there will be few days actually lost to debate what has already been debated for 3 years. But the timing was obviously not lost on Boris. The cat was most definitely intended to be put among the pigeons.
So now Boris has lost but he is claiming to want to push through Brexit even if it kills him (which, of course, some hope it will). He sees it as ‘the will of the people’ and is also prepared to give the people a vote on this through a General Election but, quite contrarily as I see it, the opposition parties do not go for this. Why? Because they don’t have much chance of winning. So rather than give the people the chance to vote they would prefer to withhold that opportunity from the population of the UK. Is that democratic?
You might think from this that I am a supporter of Johnson. I am not. However, I am concerned about the voice of many ordinary people being silenced by Parliament when MPs are, in fact, there to be the spokespeople of the electorate. I am also concerned that there is little or nothing, in the narrative of those opposition parties who wish to block Brexit, to address some of the legitimate concerns of the Leavers. Surely these voters deserve a considered response to their worries as much as any other voters. And some solutions.
On the other side, the opposition parties cry ‘shame’ that they are being silenced by the shutting down of Parliament, which is certainly a heavy-handed move. But have they not all just had three years to debate a deal? And rejected May’s eventual deal three times in the Commons? What kind of rabbit do any of them think they can pull out of a hat at this stage? And in the meantime is it not absolutely sensible for the government to prepare for no-deal? May was criticised enough for not having done so.
After all, having made a ‘no-deal’ impossible, this removes any bargaining power from whichever party might be negotiating with Brussels in future. They have tied themselves in knots because surely, in any negotiation, you do have to keep the possibility of walking away on the table. Don’t you? Unless, as in most private divorces, there is a legal structure that outlines what is a fair outcome for both parties. But this protection doesn’t seem to exist in what feels like a wild-west divorce.
I may have voted Remain but I do seek fairness of approach and what I am seeing is exactly what leads a population into extreme government – the ignoring of the sentiment of the people by Parliament. The historian David Starkey commented this morning that it is a dangerous moment when Parliament overrides the will of the people, which effectively it has done by blocking a snap election. It feels to me as if both sides are being high-handed with democracy. Boris through proroguing Parliament but the opposition parties by preventing the election.
After all, everyone has been clamouring for another Referendum, saying it is time to put it back to the people but when given that opportunity they block it. The election effectively provides the equivalent of another referendum (provided, of course, Labour can decide what it stands for, leave or remain). But no, the other parties look at the polls which give Boris and Farage the potential majority and say they will only hold an election when it suits them and, in the meantime, insist on kicking the Brexit can down the road, whatever the French say.
But the people did vote Leave. And we can no longer say that they don’t know what they voted for. Project Fear has been well and truly publicised for three years. So the current polls suggesting that Brexit and Boris/Farage would nonetheless potentially win an election has to reflect the fact that, despite the negative forecasts about how this country would fare on a no-deal Brexit, there are still a large number of people who want to exit the EU anyway.
Now have you noticed how there is suddenly talk of it only being an ‘advisory Referendum’, although this fact has hardly been mentioned as a challenge to the result over the last three years. Why on earth wasn’t this status raised immediately in 2016 so that the Government could use the result as a sounding board and tackle some of the issues raised. But no, they rushed headlong into Brexit. Surely those opposed to the result could have made more of this argument at the time and allowed us to find solutions to the problems, besides exiting the EU? But now we are well and truly stuck and it has unsettled our democratic processes.
What has always made me uncomfortable is the narrative about the Leavers all being ‘Little Englanders’ and ignorant idiots. It is so disrespectful as there are plenty of thoroughly intelligent and successful people in that group. It feels high-handed and begs the question whether the people who talk like this are harking back to days before universal suffrage. Perhaps they regret that the vote was ever granted to all. It feels as if some elitist metropolitan attitudes are suggesting that, as in previous centuries, some votes count for more than others.
It was only a century or so ago that universal suffrage was passed. Prior to that only men, the wealthy and the educated had the vote. The lower classes weren’t deemed clever enough to know how to vote. Workers and women had to wait until the twentieth century for their moment. Are those who are unhappy with the Referendum result equally feeling that perhaps universal suffrage has been a bad idea – that after all there are some people in the UK who don’t know what’s good for them?
There seems to be no will to listen and respect opinions that differ to our own, or to find solutions that encompass some middle ground. I believe that this is what May was attempting to do, albeit without success or panache. Instead each side is now adopting battle zones through the courts, parliament and the press and overriding the other party in any way they can, seemingly for political ends. It doesn’t feel particularly democratic. It feels dangerous. And it divides us as a nation.
The Brexit negotiation has been a disaster for us all. There is so much to be gained through alliance and there are many ways to achieve that outcome. Would it not now give us all an ounce of hope if, whichever Party leads us into the future, they are able to pull this country together after all this fiasco? I am not averse to seeing Boris land in a ditch but I do want all voices to be heard and for our country to be united in some kind of central common ground again. We can’t take democracy for granted.
Aug 28
2019
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Helen Whitten
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There seems to be an obsession with longevity at the moment. Endless research on this, that and the other food, magic pill or habit that will keep us alive for longer. Though personally I am not convinced that I wish to live for longer. Why do the scientists think this is such a great goal, I wonder? I gather there are various experiments in the US to maintain life, including cryotechnology, which only makes me think of the crazy consequences of freezing people depicted brilliantly in the antics of Woody Allen in his film Sleeper!
But for me, it looks as if I could be quasi-immortal! Two pieces of research released this year demonstrate, firstly, that it’s the inconsequential contact we have with strangers every day that keep us healthy, happy and alive. Secondly, that optimists stay healthier and live longer. Oh, and incidentally being a grandparent helps too. Yay!
Mind you, as I say, I am more interested in being healthy than living forever but it seems like good news, nonetheless. And why does this work for me? Well, as most of you who know me would agree, I am an optimist and a positive-thinker (why else would I have called my company Positiveworks?!). And now that we have moved to Kew Village we are experiencing a delightful number of everyday chit-chats with neighbours, florists, baristas, and newsagents, alongside all the jolly conversations we have at the Avenue Club where we study French, wellbeing, yoga, creative writing and more. I have never lived in such a friendly community before.
In my early life we lived in Surrey, near Oxted, and I remember that my young nephew, who lived in Wandsworth, used to comment to my mother, his grandmother, that she seemed to know “everyone” in the High Street as she walked alongside him. And she certainly knew several of those people by sight, as did I as a child. But after Surrey, I moved to London and that is, in the main, the land of anonymity, which, I have to admit, quite suited me for much of my life. As a busy working Mum I enjoyed choosing who I spoke to rather than bumping into people.
Here in Kew we bump into someone we recognise, if not know intimately as friends, every day. It is an extraordinarily friendly place where we just have to walk down the street and some stranger will smile at us. And what an interestingly nice feeling that is, after all, isn’t it? Especially for this latter part of life. I am really coming to enjoy these brief encounters.
I wonder what it is about a chance meeting that makes us happy. There is obviously something that happens in these moments that is meaningful and boosts our mood. Does receiving a smile from a stranger somehow reinforce the idea that the world is a good place, that the majority of people are pleasant and not out to do us harm? It doesn’t matter whether that person is local or comes from the other side of the world, a few words exchanged with a stranger or someone one only sees randomly definitely makes one feel that all is good with the world. So, go on, smile at a stranger today and make them live longer!
Now those of us who are optimists have often been accused of being unrealistic. But ha, it seems that for health and longevity we have the answer after all! And, of course, we have a point, don’t we? Wouldn’t the world fall apart if there were more evil people than good, more chaos than order? On the whole, most of the time, the world is far from perfect, but there are enough good folk in it to remind us that positive thinking isn’t as ridiculous as some people consider it to be. At least one spends each day feeling relatively happy, which is good for our immune systems, and then if something bad does happen then one has energy in reserve to manage it. Whereas the pessimists must spend each day rather anxious and miserable and then if the inevitable bad thing happens they will be facing it from an already-depleted physical and emotional state. Won’t they? I am sure you might have some personal view on that, so do share it.
To be honest I wouldn’t have started my business Positiveworks unless I had optimism – nor would any entrepreneur begin a venture unless they believed in it and thought positively about it. How could they? They can’t prove it will work until it does work. In 1992 when I set up the company I had some qualifications, some good training and coaching products but no clients. Noone knew me from Adam but somewhere in my gut I believed I could make it work. In my own small way, I did.
And apart from business, we need optimism and positive thinking if we are playing sports, running a public sector organisation, treating patients as a doctor or therapist, teaching children from all backgrounds, managing a health condition, making a change.
Or, indeed, running a country. I am sorry, I have great respect for Philip Hammond but I personally don’t think an Eeyore has the right credentials to run a country and make it successful so I am glad he didn’t stand for PM, though I am far from happy with the Tigger of a PM we do have. Talk about extremes… For when I talk of optimism I am not speaking of Pollyanna thinking. Not thinking that everything in the garden will always be roses. I am referring to rational optimism – being optimistic about things that have a relative potential for success or positive outcome.
One of the things that concerns me most these days is that politicians and voters alike talk this country down. There are plenty of bad and embarrassing things happening in the rest of the world too. We certainly aren’t the worst. But because we are divided on this never-ending topic of Brexit people choose to put the country down at the same time as denigrating the opposite side, whether a Remainer or a Leaver. Whatever happens we are absolutely going to need to think optimistically about ourselves and our ability to rebuild our economy, our relationships with other countries and bring together this divided population of ours. We can’t do that on pessimism and negative thinking.
So I am happy that something (was it being born in sunny May, a genetic gift, or an experience of childhood) has made me an optimist. And perhaps as an optimist I also tend to believe that the majority of people around me do not wish me harm and are friendly, and so have frequent inconsequential and yet meaningful chats and conversations with people in this village, on the tube, waiting in a lift and more. It has felt quite natural for me to do so, though perhaps now I should make even more of an effort to embrace positive thinking and smile at strangers, to keep myself healthy.
But ultimately, do we really want to be immortal? I don’t think so. Healthy, yes, but to live longer and longer just for the sake of it certainly does not fill me with optimism or joy, so I shall leave that to those people who are choosing to cryogenically freeze themselves for the future. If they are as amusing as Woody Allen when they thaw, life won’t be so bad. In the meantime, who might you smile at today? And how might you develop an optimistic thought about life despite Brexit and Trump?! Please do. We need all the positive and optimistic thoughts we can get.
PS. you can now download our book Reclaim Health A recovery strategy when doctors can’t explain your symptoms for free on http://reclaimhealth.org.uk/?page_id=280
http://reclaimhealth.org.uk/?page_id=280
Aug 15
2019
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Helen Whitten
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Boris Johnson’s threat to suspend Parliament to push through a no-deal Brexit is a worrying one as it seems to put two fingers up to the norms of our Constitution and to democracy. We hear that the electorate want a ‘strong man’ as leader though I have yet to meet anyone personally who says this. For me the idea of a strong man as leader makes me shudder. I think of Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Kim Jong Un and many more throughout history who have caused great harm.
Now, a wise leader would be good and in wisdom there is some strength but it is not the strength of the bully. It is the quiet strength of seeking to do what is right and what is in the benefit of the people, in this case the United Kingdom. But this focus cannot be in isolation as “No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.” [John Donne] The leader has to think beyond their own shores as everything that happens within a country impacts the world, and vice versa. And in today’s world more than ever.
But wisdom isn’t a word we hear a lot. We hear idiotic words and soundbites from our politicians that are often meaningless and get contradicted the next moment with no sense that this lack of continuity demonstrates a flakiness of purpose or intent.
The Queen is obviously as dismayed by our current band of politicians’ inability to govern as the rest of us. The expenses scandals and the favours for office leave us rather disgusted that we are being led by people in all parties who would sell themselves for a peerage or to massage their egos in some way.
So why have we ended up in this situation? One aspect that comes to my mind is that many previous ministers and politicians served in the armed forces. Of course many mistakes were made in warfare but they potentially learnt more about leadership within that military environment – the need for a vision, a strategy, to pull a team together to fight alongside one another, to protect one another in the face of onslaught.
For better or for worse there was also an educational system that raised young men for these officer roles as war was the norm in previous times. This is now an outdated concept but it could be of benefit to our country for schools to focus more on the skills of leadership, not in the model of the ‘strong man’ but in enabling young people, girls and boys, to consider what it is to analyse a threatening situation, to problem-solve, to seek multiple potential methods of approaching that situation and then galvanise people to tackle it, even if there is some danger to be faced.
Everyone loves to put this country down, including our own politicians, despite the fact that others see it as a land of opportunity and relative fairness. Have we overlooked the concept of loyalty to one’s country in the fear of right-wing nationalism? Surely there is a middle way. We can feel proud of our country and yet retain a sense of being a part of the world beyond.
There are people in every country of the world who seek a sense of belonging, who wish to be part of a community. These people might congregate around a church, synagogue, mosque or a local hub and value continuity of their cultural and social norms. There is a place for this and it does not mean that those people are necessarily racist or seek to prevent others leading their own lives. But there can be an arrogance among the Westminster political class that leads them to lecture rather than to empathise with those who enjoy tradition, berating them for being uncomfortable with change instead of valuing them for the contributions they make within a society. There is never just one ‘right way’. There are surely many ways of living this life of ours.
“Liberalism is alive and thriving” Jo Swinson stated after her election as leader of the LibDems in July this year. But how liberal is liberalism these days? We don’t want politicians who live in an echo-chamber. Don’t we want politicians who are broad thinkers and have the ability to make decisions on the basis of a range of information and sentiment?
When I worked on the biography of Harold Macmillan it was well-known that he and other MPs spent time reading. How well read are our politicians? How much knowledge of history and philosophy, or political ideas, shapes their thinking? How many take the time to go to the theatre and have their mind opened to new ways of perceiving situations? Or to classical music concerts to be moved by the beauty and disciplined creativity of an orchestra? How many consider that they are role models and have a duty to give the population a lead on art and culture beyond the inevitable supposedly-trendy must-do gig of being photographed with rappers at Glastonbury?
Whilst I am sure there are some politicians who harbour a real sense of wanting to make a difference, I fear there are other career politicians who just wish to have power and status. For what are the qualifications to become a politician? It seems that you just have to have a British Passport, be 18, have some money for your campaign and then make enough noise to get noticed. There is no question of what A levels, university degrees or professional qualifications might be required. There is no mention of ‘character’, ethics, values or purpose in the advice on ‘how to become an MP’.
Personally I don’t think anyone should become an MP unless they have spent time in other sectors beforehand. A vast majority of the companies in the UK are SMEs. Perhaps budding MPs should see how difficult it is to run a small business when politicians walk roughshod over them and give them no sense of future direction around which they can build their strategies, budgets and plans. Perhaps they should get experience of running a large department and understand the complexities that exist within the NHS, Defence, transport, technology and business before being made a Minister of an area they know little or nothing about?
And then what about professional development once in the job? What about appraisals, 360 degree feedback, some sense that the person is self-observing and learning from mistakes? What about personality profiling, communication skills, assertiveness, management and leadership skills? Whenever some beknighted MP does take the initiative to get some training, coaching or development there is a howling about it costing money. But don’t we want our politicians to be competent, professional, to hold power with conscious intent? To develop self-knowledge, critical thinking, delegation skills? Perhaps even to develop wisdom?
When will politicians realize that we see through shallowness and flakiness? When will they recognise the power and value of moral capital? Of believing in something but not being deaf to other viewpoints, being open and listening to diverse opinions but having the wisdom to stop, analyse and reflect on the direction they believe to be right and not bow to populist pressure. Then having the honesty to let us know where this is intended to take us.
No, I don’t want a strong leader. I want a competent one. I want someone wise enough to consider and reflect. Someone who knows they are fallible and is not too arrogant to ask for advice and heed it. Someone who can unite others to go with them. I certainly don’t want someone who forces their hand just to get what they want. There lies dictatorship.
Aug 07
2019
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Helen Whitten
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If you are experiencing persisting physical symptoms such as stomach cramps, severe fatigue, exhaustion, pain in your muscles, over a period of several months, it is likely that you will go to your doctor in the expectation that they will be able to diagnose your problem and prescribe treatment to alleviate your symptoms. Should they tell you at the end of your appointments and investigations that they can find nothing physically wrong with you this can be bewildering and disheartening. It can be equally confusing for the doctor, who is trained to diagnose and prescribe and may well feel frustrated that he or she cannot help you.
GPs estimate that approximately 50% of patients in their waiting rooms do not have a fixed pathology of disease that they can detect. So what is happening?
Over the past five years my partner Dr David Beales, who was a GP himself for some 30 years, brought together a team of experts to research and seek solutions. We called ourselves the Reclaim Health team and the outcome of this collaboration is our book Reclaim Health: a recovery strategy when doctors can’t explain your symptoms, just published on Amazon. Click this link .
This book is for those who have or are experiencing these medically unexplained symptoms. In writing this, we have benefited hugely from having two expert ex-patients in our team, Julia MacDonald and Janice Benning, both of whom were severely unwell for more than 10 years with chronic fatigue syndrome. They used the tools and strategies in this book to reclaim their own health and have since then applied this process to many clients, with excellent results. Janice and Julia were able not only to provide us with their experiences but also help us to present our findings, tips and techniques in this book in a simple yet powerful way, knowing that when you are unwell you do not have much energy to read, let alone read anything complicated.
We initially approached this as a research project, obtaining funds from the National Institute of Health to research the literature and Janice and Julia then ran a pilot course to test recovery techniques, which we accomplished. One of the keys to success is to give an empowering explanation of the symptoms a patient is experiencing, within the context of their immune system. For more information on this please click to see David’s article.
The two GPs in the team, David and Gina Johnson, have added the science and their practical experience of working with these patients, addressing how the interconnection between mind and body can influence symptoms. I have contributed the coaching processes that can help a patient pursue their goals of wellbeing and return to their lives as healthy individuals, breaking through old patterns and persisting through everyday challenges.
I suspect that any of you reading this may either have experienced these symptoms yourself or know someone who may be struggling to reclaim their health. Do take a look at it on Amazon and buy a copy or send one to a friend you think may benefit. As a not-for-profit team, we have kept the price intentionally low, at cost, £4.83 so that as many people as possible will be able to take advantage of the experiences, science and helpful techniques included in this book.
As a client has commented: “I use my Reclaim skills all the time, and life is good. Forever grateful.” Others can benefit too – both those with symptoms and those medics, coaches, therapists, HR teams, or family and friends who are supporting someone who is suffering from problems such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, Irritable Bowel.
It is such a shame to feel so debilitated that you can’t participate or enjoy life. People arrive at this place for many different reasons when their level of tolerance – physical, mental, spiritual – is exhausted. Sometimes people feel so unwell that they can’t enjoy their partner, children, work or even the hobbies they used to love. But as with anything in life this can lead to habits, conscious or unconscious, that keep you stuck and then returning to health and life can seem scary, like too big a challenge. The task can look too steep and so people end up feeling helpless and hopeless.
But it doesn’t have to be an exhausting challenge. Gradually, small step by small step, people begin to take control of their lives again – their thoughts, emotions, physical strength, flexibility and energy. They notice when they are ‘doing’ negativity or pessimism. They begin to develop the ability to say ‘no’ to people they have found ask too much of them. They begin to tune into their bodies and recognise when they need to rest or sleep, when and what they need to eat, what exercise re-energises them, or when they just need to be still, perhaps to meditate or reflect. They begin to define the lifestyle, relationships and environmental choices that nurture them, the creativity that inspires them and to regain a sense of purpose and meaning. And key to all of this is compassion – compassion for self and compassion for others.
Sadly many people are told that they will never recover from these kinds of chronic and debilitating conditions. We would like to encourage them to believe that they can – and include plenty of case studies in the book of those who have turned their lives around to reclaim their health. So I shall just finish with one example of a client in his 20s, Edward, who gave this feedback after sessions with Janice:
“I thought my life was over, but 2 years later I have climbed Snowdon and celebrated with a pint! I wouldn’t have the energy to watch a park run, but now I run it. Knowing there was another way that would allow me to live my life was the most liberating and emotional experience.”
We believe that this book provides that help so do click here to take a peek at it and let us know how you, or anyone you know who reads it, gets on! Do visit our website www.reclaimhealth.org.uk. We would love your feedback.